Subjective Morality

Archive for September, 2009

I just made a font out of my handwriting using fontcapture, and I’m uploading it here for all you silly masochists to download. Have fun with that.

The door was big, black and heavy as all hell. There’s one of those buttons that open it for people in wheelchairs or for people who are otherwise similarly so disabled that they can’t open a door by themselves. There’s this porch-like thing in front of the building with some plants nearby in big porcelain pots. The door swings with no small expenditure of energy on my part and I enter the waiting room of my neurologist’s office. My father enters after me and walks to the desk to talk to the receptionist and get everything all sorted out and such. I go to a seat that’s far away from anyone who could conceivably bother me. There are two rows of plastic, blue chairs that aren’t altogether uncomfortable, but I suppose are more comfy than those wooden desks students are used to sitting their buttocks in at school. There’s a Hispanic family sitting in the row of chairs behind me, speaking Spanish to each other and talking about that horrid children’s show Special Agent Oso (which I shall rip on in a different post since it deserves one all its own for ripping on). There’s at least one kid with that family that I can tell, since this is a pediatric neurology clinic, but I can’t be sure how many. The carpet is gray with four little, red boxes in each tile, spaced, I’m sure, in equal proportion from one another. The smell of the room is stale, like a hotel lobby but not nice. There’s that weird chirbling sound in the background, you know, the high-pitched electronic squeel you usually hear in offices. I think it comes from fax machines. There’s this wallpaper on the wall in front my seat (the position of which basically forces me to look at it) that is this castle that has this optical illusion effect going on, like some of the turrets look like they’re moved to the left, but they aren’t. Not sure how to describe it. The castle has little strips taken out of it here and there, leaving that papery residue you get when you try to carefully tear a sticker off a book or something and you fail and you’re sad because now the cover of your book is marred by papery residue and such and then you feel angry every time you see it, which’ll be often if you haven’t read it yet or are just starting or something, you’ll feel this abject sadness and frustration that your book isn’t pretty and pristine anymore. But yeah, I’m assuming the castle-wallpaper was ripped by one of the mental children, and indeed, much of the stuff in the waiting room looks to have been either brutally played-with or bitten or torn in some way. I think there are bite-marks on the plastic armrest of my chair, which disturbs me, and all the while I’m waiting I’m trying really hard not to let my arms rest on the armrest, but I’m taking notes for this here post I’m writing now and my arm is getting fairly tired from all the writing with my Pilot Precise V5 (which is my pen of choice) and I just kinda want to rest my arm, so I do on that armrest that looks like it’s been chewed on by kids with mental problems.

Speaking of mental problems, I feel a deep sense of shame whenever I’m in this waiting room and I get uber-paranoid that the people around me think that I have some mental disability when in fact I just get migraines sometimes and I’m not mentally disturbed or any such thing, but I still feel the need to disprove their assumptions that may not even exist and so I bring a really thick book just to show that I can read or I write a lot in my notebook and kinda make noises like I’m frustrated with my writing, which probably makes it more likely for them to think that I’m mentally challenged or something so then I play it down and act nonchalant and cool and stuff, which I don’t do well.

Anyway, the receptionist is an intimidating woman named Kanya, I’m assuming, or at least that’s what the little plastic name-thing on her desk says, and it’s a neat name I suppose, but anyway I observe or rather hear a conversation she’s having with a caller who is apparently trying to call Dr. Shah himself (Dr. Shah being the leader or head doctor or whatever of this place) and this conversation (one-sided for obvious reasons) goes somewhat like this:

“You’re looking for Doctor Shah? This isn’t him. You’re calling his practice? He’s a physician. He’s in with patients. There’s no good time to see him.”

And then she hangs up the phone. I think she was rather rude, but I suppose it would be a sucky job to sit there all day answering phones and signing in appointments with those ugly yellow walls staring at her. (On a tangent note, the wall that holds the door isn’t too bad to look at, just a black door and some windows out of which you can see the plants growing out on the porch thing, which is a pretty sight amidst all this depressing yellow.)

While I’m waiting, some patients who are lucky enough to be done with their appointments leave, and one of them shoots out the door rather quickly, leaving it open and letting the breeze through, which is cold. So I’m just sitting there awkwardly looking at the big open space where the door should be which leads outside to the brutal cold and wind and I’m debating internally whether I should get up and close the thing but no one else in the room has gotten up and done it yet, and so, right before I resolve to get up and close the door, the damn thing closes by itself after what has to be at least five minutes.

Finally, the nurse comes out and calls my name, and I can’t stand it when nurses call me into an appointment because they always call for Alexander, which makes me feel even more uncomfortable than I already am usually. So the nurse takes my weight and height and leads me to room #3, which, thankfully, is not the room with the examination table in the shape of a lion. The nurse tells me to hop up on the table-that-is-not-a-lion and takes my temperature and does all the stuff nurses usually do, barring “nurses” you find in adult movies. When the nurse leaves, I sit there on the exam table and kick my legs and look around the room. On the inside of the door, there are three signs, one of which reads:

PLEASE DO NOT DISPOSE DIRTY DIAPERS IN THE WASTEBASKET. THEY LEAVE AN UNPLEASANT ODOR. PLEASE JUST GIVE TO ANY NURSE YOU ARE ABLE TO FIND. THANK YOU.

There looks to be a diaper in the wastebasket. I imagine a parent holding a diaper over their naked child and just looking around for a nurse and calling one over and saying, “Be a doll and take this for me. Thanks.” and I know that no woman, in the history of the world, has ever said the phrase “be a doll,” but maybe a man might, though that would still be exceedingly strange and awkward.

This ruminating over the whole mother-diaper-nurse issue manages to keep me occupied long enough for the doctor (who is not Shah) to enter and ask me questions and generally assess my mental health and such. She ends up giving me an extended prescription of the migraine medication RELPAX, which I was already taking, which works fine for me as I’m fairly anxious to get this over with and get the hell out of here.

My father makes another appointment with Kanya and I wait outside in the cold while he does so. Father then comes out and says, “Well, that was a waste of time.”

There’s a question posed by Chuck Klosterman in Sex, Drugs, And Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto that goes like this:

Let us assume a fully grown, completely healthy Clydesdale horse has his hooves shackled to the ground while his head is held in place with thick rope. He is conscious and standing upright, but completely immobile. And let us assume that–for some reason–every political prisoner on earth (as cited by Amnesty International) will be released from captivity if you can kick this horse to death in less than twenty minutes. You are allowed to wear steel-toed boots. Would you attempt to do this?

Now, I hate animal cruelty. Nothing incenses me more. Nothing. If you want me to beat you to death with a bent crowbar, you should try putting a kitten in a blender with me in the immediate vicinity. You’ll be a bloody mass on the floor before you can even press the “purèe” button. I’ll be like the Bear Jew on your ass.

Keeping that in mind, I would totally kick the horse to death. Without a doubt. Now, I probably couldn’t do it within twenty minutes, because I’m weak as fuck, but I could probably kill it, at least. Well, it doesn’t matter. The point is: if you don’t kill the damn horse, nothing will change. If you do, something will. Strange that the concept of nothing changing scares me more than the thought of something changing, since humans don’t like change, but hey, it’s freedom for a shitload of people. Isn’t that worth killing a worthless horse that just eats and craps and pulls people around for tours of slightly interesting farms that have fences that curve around trees because the fence-builders were too lazy or too soft to just cut the damn thing down? Yeah, I think so. I value freedom way more than a horse. Any horse. Even if it could talk. I’d kick it in the mouth. Yeah? Cool.

It’s late, I know, but here’s my own little reminiscence about 9/11:

I was in elementary school and I was sitting in my little wood-metal desk with my friend, Garrett, sitting next to me. Our teacher, Mr. Puckett, had brought in a television and had it on some news channel. All I saw on the screen was what I thought to be two smokestacks. I remember thinking, “Why are we watching this?” Yeah, horrible, I know, but I was a kid, and kids percieve things differently; they don’t really see things clearly. At least I didn’t.

It was only after I got home and I saw it on the evening news that I realized what really happened, but didn’t fully understand the implications. Naturally, I asked my parents about it and got ambiguous answer. I remember asking my sister why everyone was talking about it, and she said to me, “Alex, textbooks will have to be rewritten because of this.” And she just kinda shook her head.

I still didn’t really get it. It wasn’t until later, when I was able to properly process the things that happened that day (people jumping out of 90-story windows to avoid being burned alive; people being crushed by tons of concrete and steel beams; people just dying in really horrific ways, all because of religious zealotry and lax airport security) that I had that same catharsis that most people had on 9/11.

It’s nine years later and the site of the World Trade Center is still a big hole.

I saw 9 on Saturday, and I wasn’t too excited about it. I didn’t look it up on Wikipedia or anything, so I went into it not knowing anything about it. It was produced by Tim Burton, so I figured it couldn’t be horrible.

We’ve all seen the Road Runner cartoons, right? Do I really need to go into narration on them? OK, good.

Wile E. Coyote, though he seems to have limitless resources as the boxes upon boxes of Acme products suggest, still chases after the Road Runner endlessly, never giving up, never being deterred, despite the apparent fact that this universe he’s living in has conspired to make it impossible for him to catch the Road Runner. He’s either too stupidly ingenious, or just willfully ignorant to realize his folly. Why can’t he, like David Foster Wallace suggests in The Broom of the System, “Just get Chinese food?” Is it because he’s incapable of getting Chinese food or because he just doesn’t like Chinese food? Maybe he’s racist and hates Chinese people.

The real reason Wile E. Coyote chases the Road Runner against all logic, is because of Us, the ever-present watchers. We made this poor coyote into the sad, desperate mess that he is. We wouldn’t be entertained if he just ate the Road Runner; it’d be just like a snuff film. We made Wile E. Coyote into the sad, desperately hungry genius that he is.

Speaking of hunger, why hasn’t he starved yet? His only apparent source of food is the Road Runner and he can’t catch him, so logically he should starve. But again, we increase his torture by making it so he can’t starve. Oh, he can still feel hunger, but starving is just too good for our creation; it’d ruin the fun. We see the Road Runner eating all the time, but never the poor coyote.

Why is the Road Runner the de facto hero in this cartoon? Wile E. Coyote is far more interesting and he’s trying so hard. Should not such effort be rewarded? Why are we glorifying this bird that only says one thing ever, throughout the entire cartoon?

“Beep, beep.”

My shoes are black and white with skulls

I write on them with gel-pens and Sharpies

“Happy” on one shoe, “Angry” on the other

The one with angry on it is my kickin’ shoe

When I was going to elementary school, I rode a bus. I didn’t have my mother pick me up every day and I didn’t walk home from school as I wish I could have done. I rode the bus. There was a kid—Jacob, I think his name was—who rode that bus with me. He was Sarah Tanner’s younger brother, a couple grades below me. I remember once when we were being ridden home by a driver that I wasn’t too fond of, Jacob posited that the bus should float instead of being inexorably bound by gravity and turning wheels in order to move. I told him that was impossible and he posited even more ridiculous ideas about how the bus should locomote. It was at this time that the seeds of skepticism were beginning to germinate within me and I began to question everything being told me.

The naïveté of Jacob’s ideas is beautiful to me now; that sense of wonder, of imagining what could be possible with just a few jets and the permission of the school district. Of course, it’s far more complicated than that to get a bus-load of kids safely floating in the air—things to be considered like aerodynamics and hydraulics and all that stuff that engineers grapple with.

Innocence has started to become uncool. We undervalue it today. I remember watching American Pie and sitting there thinking it was weird that these high-school seniors haven’t lost their virginity yet. I found the plot unbelievable because no high school senior hasn’t had sex in our modern society, and if they haven’t, they are branded a loser.

I was talking to one of my teachers in the hall one day and this blond girl came up and told him, “I’m pregnant, so I may duck out and go to the bathroom every now and then to throw up. Is that OK?” I was appalled. No kid in high-school should be having babies. None. If you can’t fucking provide for a child and make damn sure that that child will have a better life than you, then you should not reproduce. Anyone who has a kid that young, and wanted it, has something wrong with them; it’s fucking sick to bring a child into the world knowing you’re not equipped to raise it, all because your dumbfuck friends are doing it. This is, of course, not counting girls who get raped. That’s not their fault, obviously.

(I seem to have turned this into a rant on teen pregnancy. Back to innocence.)

When I think of innocence, I see this beautiful, young boy. He doesn’t know about sex or violence or politics or any of the other things adults have to worry about. He is carefree; playing with his friends and getting into trouble, not afraid to run everywhere with the indignant eyes of the adults watching him. He has wonder in his eyes and finds the world exciting; he turns up rocks looking for roly-polys and worms and other insects, which fascinate him with their slimey differentness.

Adults—they don’t feel the same sense of wonderment. They’ve already turned over every rock and they know what’s under them: dirt and bugs. They think of bugs as nasty and things that they don’t need to know anything about. As I find myself increasing in age, I ask myself more and more, “Do I really need to know this?” And that scares me. I can feel my curiosity waning. I wonder if this is just a natural part of taking your lot in life; becoming ignorant of everything you don’t need to know to survive.

Innocence needs a comeback. I’m tired of 10-year-olds showing off their underwear and getting pregnant and texting on their cellphones—Christ! there are 7-year-olds with cellphones now. Are parents really this scared that their kids will be abducted? We’re turning into a nation of pussified idiots! And I hope it stops soon. But I doubt it will.

When I was about 6, my parents took me and my sister to Disney World in Los Angeles. I have my back turned to the camera because I thought that being in a jail of any sort made me a bad person, therefore I should not be photographed in a jail, but my mother thought it’d be a good photo and basically forced me to pose for it. I threw a huge fit over the whole thing. Ah, the logic of a child.